


A Rose and a Thistle

by ice_hot_13



Category: Doom Patrol (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-16
Updated: 2020-03-23
Packaged: 2021-02-06 23:22:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 6,575
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21447586
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ice_hot_13/pseuds/ice_hot_13
Summary: As Rita tries to help Larry she finds that, somehow, she's helping herself heal, too.
Relationships: John Bowers/Larry Trainor, Rita Farr & Larry Trainor
Comments: 23
Kudos: 90





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> It's "The Secret Garden" inspired fic that no one ever thought to ask for. I love the Rita-and-Larry friendship more than i'd ever expected????

After a decade of near solitude, Rita was ready for some company. She had Niles, of course, who she very much respected, but he’d shown up already knowing everything about her, so she felt less like his friend and more like his student, or maybe just his charge. When she wandered through the manor while he was away, she felt like little Mary Lennox from The Secret Garden, peeking into rooms her personal Mr. Craven had long forgotten about, feeling odd and out of place and altogether like she didn’t belong anywhere at all.

It was lonely, in the manor. In Rita’s life. She felt like a ghost who haunted the mansion, wandering in silence; at some point, maybe around four years in, she’d had a phase where she talked to herself almost nonstop, but it didn’t help the loneliness. She’d thought briefly about getting a cat, but was sure she would eventually scare it away, and was afraid it wouldn’t like her. She couldn’t stand to meet any of Niles’ temporary visitors, even knowing she’d probably never see any of them again; Rita had always been the type of person to care too deeply about the opinion of strangers, and becoming this sort of monster had only made her more terrified of being seen. The years passed quietly, emptily.

And then, Niles found Larry. Niles didn’t tell Rita much, in the weeks leading up to Larry’s actual arrival. Rita never knew much about the people who came and went from the manor, which suited her just fine. He knew that she didn’t want to be seen by them and didn’t want to deal with them and he shielded her appropriately. Really, she was surprised when Niles mentioned Larry ahead of time at all.

“I’ve found someone who may stay here,” Niles told her, when he’d just arrived from one trip and had left his bags packed, about to leave for another.

“What makes you think that?” Rita asked, her knitting needles pausing. No one ever stayed, not for long. Everyone always had somewhere to be, it seemed. Loved ones to return to, criminals to fight, all things Rita had no part in. She stayed because she had no one, wanted no one, and could help no one. She had no new life to forge, was going to live in this _after _state forever.

“I think he doesn’t have anywhere else he wants to go.” Which seemed like an odd thing for optimistic Niles to say; at first, he’d tried to convince Rita that she could go home, that people in her life would accept her back. There weren’t any people there, she’d told him flatly, and it was better the rest of the world forgot about Rita Farr. Well – not forgot, preferably, but remembered her as she was.

When Niles left, Rita was left waiting, one ear always cocked, listening for the front door. She felt, oddly enough, like a child waiting for a new sibling to arrive home for the first time. She wouldn’t know what that really felt like, of course; she’d had no siblings.

A week and a half after Niles had left, he returned so early in the morning that Rita was still asleep, and when she wandered through the manor in the late morning, she stumbled upon them by accident, spotting Niles across the hallway because a light had caught her eye.

“Hello, Rita,” Niles called over, as if what he was doing was perfectly normal; he was staring intently at a sort-of-man, a brightly shimmering ghost that glowed, and it turned to look at Rita, too. When it saw her, it floated back, and then dove somewhere out of sight through the doorway. Rita took a tentative step closer.

“What was that thing?” she leaned through the doorway, taking in more of the room. “Who is that?” A man lay on the hospital bed Niles had wheeled in, so heavily bandaged she couldn’t see an inch of skin. Which of them was the new guest? Both?

“This is Larry Trainor,” Niles told her, “he’s a pilot who-”

“_Was _a pilot,” the bandaged man said wryly, and Rita might have jumped a little.

“Oh, you’re awake! Well, hello.” She drew herself up a little straighter. “I’m Rita Farr. It’s lovely to meet you.”

“Lovely to meet you too.” He said, voice flat. He still hadn’t looked at her. Probably, anyways, it was hard to tell with the goggles, but he hadn’t turned his head towards her. “I take it you’ve met the asshole alien who lives inside me, judging from how scared you look.”

“I’m not _scared,” _Rita protested, tossing her hair back. She wasn’t, really, now that the thing had vanished. And anyways, it didn’t _do _anything, just hovered, so she didn’t have much to be worried about yet. “Your little sparkling ghost friend doesn’t frighten me.”

Larry made a choking sound that might have been a laugh. “My sparkling ghost friend isn’t what he looks like,” he said, finally did turn his head to look at her. “I assume you aren’t either, since you don’t look like you belong here. Weren’t you famous?”

“Fame is subjective,” Rita stiffened, feeling something beneath her skin give way – where? Somewhere over her ribs was sliding. “I expect you were famous to some, too, Mr. Trainor.”

“Sure am now,” Larry muttered, “bet it’s nice to be known for something that _didn’t _ruin your life.”

Rita felt ridiculously like stamping her foot and shouting at him. It didn’t _matter _how nice being famous had been, not _now. _Now, they were the same thing, her and him, so he didn’t have to act like he was worse off, like she hadn’t been suffering every day since her own accident.

“Well,” she sniffed, “lovely to meet you.”

She nearly stalked away; head held high. The Caulder House indeed; this place couldn’t have been more like Misselthwaite Manor if she’d looked outside and seen the moors. She’d found the surly, sickly boy the story had promised, and she didn’t much like the look of him.


	2. Chapter 2

Suddenly, just about everything was boring. Anything Rita started, she’d eventually lose interest partway, find herself gazing out the half-cleaned window in front of her with a damp rag in hand or pausing in her knitting so long that the stitches slipped from her needles, wondering if perhaps she should go say hello to Larry. Sometimes, she followed through; every time, she was met with a closed metal door and had to wander away again. It shouldn’t have been any different than any of Niles’s other boarders, people who came and left, but she could sense what Niles had – the permanence of Larry.

It was probably taking him a while to adjust. It was a readjustment, coming to the manor; Rita remembered. Coming here had been accepting her old life as over. She’d sold her house and packed up the things she wanted to keep, hung her clothes in a new closet and accepted the change. There’d been no point in any back-and-forth, she’d thought, no reason to dillydally in the limbo between her old and new life. The old one had expelled her; she moved out before the _for sale_ sign had even been posted and simply stopped returning phone calls. Few came, and it was the sign that proved she had no home in her old life.

Larry was probably right in the middle of that process, she thought, although it must have been worse for him. Surely he had actual people to miss him; most did. Most weren’t famous actresses, who floated through life collecting fans but not friends.

Rita gave Larry a full week. She knocked only occasionally, located a little folding table that became the place she left meals in the hallway, called goodnight through the door every night. Sometimes, he responded in kind. Other times, she could hear him shouting like someone else was in the room, but there wasn’t anyone there. She hadn’t seen the sparkling ghost since his first day.

Early in the morning on the eighth day, Rita was wandering through the house, unable to sleep anymore. It was a Tuesday, which she’d appointed as a baking day, and she was thinking about cake recipes. That was the one nice thing about her condition – the one, single, not even worth it nice thing – she could eat anything, _anything, _and didn’t gain a pound. Of course, sometimes she weighed whatever an ever-expanding blob weighed, but she was for once completely unrestrained by diets. Her first attempts at baking had been awful, since it was a very underdeveloped skill, but in the past ten years, she’d become, if she could say so herself, quite skilled.

Rita was wandering through the halls, thinking about German chocolate cake, when she spotted Larry. “What on earth are you doing?” she asked, stopping. He was – asleep? Odd place to sleep, if so, crumbled against the hallway wall. It was even rarer to see him outside his room, that was almost odder than finding him on the floor. Occasionally, she’d see him in hallways, and his wandering always seemed perfunctory, like something he’d forced himself to do. She didn’t have to ask why, because she’d done the same – holed up in her bedroom, forced out only when she couldn’t stand the sight of the same four walls, when pacing the length of the bedroom didn’t chase the inactivity from her muscles. Larry never stayed out for long.

“Larry?” she approached quietly, so she wouldn’t startle him, but he didn’t stir. “Are you a sleepwalker?” She tentatively shook his shoulder, to no response. “Larry, this is no place to sleep. I haven’t even dusted this week, and you have a perfectly fine bed in that cave of yours, I’m sure.”

Maybe he couldn’t sleep, and had done as she had, gone for a walk. And then – what, grown tired anyways? Maybe he couldn’t stand to look at his room anymore. Rita still understood that feeling, this many years after arriving. Sometimes, even now, everything became abruptly too cloying and she had to escape.

“There are better places to sleep, you know,” she told him. He seemed deeply asleep, though. All the same, she couldn’t just leave him on the floor. Maybe deep sleep was part of his condition; she wasn’t one to judge strange symptoms, after all. Niles hadn’t told her much; he’d taken off again last week, in fact, something to do with one of his other charges, one who’d left them. That was fine; Rita could take care of Larry and his odd sleep needs. “Well, come on then,” she gave his shoulder a more determined shake, to no effect.

She really had no choice but to do it herself, and so, with some struggling, she managed to drag him into the sitting room on the same floor, since she wasn’t sure the stairs would be terribly successful. Once there, she managed to hoist him onto a couch and laid him there instead.

“There! Isn’t that better than the floor?” No response, but by now, she wasn’t expecting one. She really wasn’t expecting the _thing _floating behind her when she turned around, and she flinched backwards. It was that lightning ghost that lived inside Larry – did that explain his unconsciousness now? She straightened her shoulders, lifted her chin, and stared right at the thing. “Was this your doing?” she demanded, pointing back at Larry. No response. “You should be ashamed of yourself, how could you leave him on the floor like that?”

It swayed back and forth, and although it didn’t have a face, she was sure it was looking at her. The thought was only slightly unnerving. Did it live _inside _Larry?

“You should be kinder to your host,” she scolded, pointing back at Larry again, “he does not deserve to be abandoned in the middle of the hallway like a houseplant! Do you hear me? I do not want to see you do this again!”

Instead of replying – could it, even? – it floated around her, and right before her eyes, dove into Larry’s chest, and suddenly Larry was awake, sitting up slowly. There really was a ghost living inside him.

“This is new,” he muttered, “usually it just dumps me on the floor.”

“Perhaps it’s learning manners.” Rita tossed her hair, folded her arms and then changed her mind, put her hands on her hips, straightened her shoulders. She didn’t actually have anything else to say, and blinked at him for a few too-long moments. Larry offered nothing. “Would you care to join me for tea today?” Rita eventually said.

“I…” Larry was starting to decline, she could tell, and she held up a hand.

“I’m familiar with your schedule, and I know you have nothing else to do. Tea is at two thirty,” she announced, as if it were part of her daily schedule, taking tea with people. She hadn’t seen anyone besides Niles in years. Once, she’d opened the door at the exact moment the mailman was arriving, and had nearly melted to the floor; the half of her body she hid behind the front door had done exactly that, sliding away from the rest of her. She had tea at two thirty every day, sure, but it certainly wasn’t with company.

Rita had more than run out of things to say, so she left for the kitchen. She half expected to be followed by the glittering spirit, to be admonished for removing Larry from the floor, but the ghost didn’t appear.

At two twenty, she set the table in the sunroom, with a teapot and teacups, her exquisitely decorated cake, and she waited. The sunroom was her favorite room; it overlooked the vast landscape behind the manor, which was mostly tall grass and a few trees. The outdoor patio was nice, but the sunroom felt safer, less exposed to the real world.

At two thirty-one, Larry appeared in the doorway. “Good afternoon,” Rita greeted him, watching him sit across from her.

“I can’t actually eat,” Larry informed her, instead of a greeting, “around people, I mean.”

“Oh, that’s alright, I understand. I knew several actresses like that,” Rita said, as graciously as she could. Larry snorted a sound that might have been a laugh.

“It’s because of the radiation, not an eating disorder,” Larry said, although he did reach for the teapot.

“What radiation?”

“The,” Larry waved a vague hand towards himself, “radiation. It’s everywhere, it’s – all of me. That’s what the bandages are for.”

“Not for some kind of burn injury?”

“Well, I have that too, but it’s not exactly going to get better.” Larry poured himself tea. Rita wanted to ask more, but Larry seemed liable to stop talking if she asked too much.

“Have you seen any of my pictures?” she asked, because that was a safe topic: herself.

“I have not.”

“Hm.” Rita sipped from her teacup. She would have thought being around someone new for the first time in years would be more nerve-wracking, but all she felt was the mundane awkwardness of not knowing what to say to someone new. No crippling social anxiety, just her, sitting across the table from Larry, wondering what to talk about next. Maybe it was because his goggles prevented eye contact, and the bandaging took away facial expressions. Maybe because he felt like – well, not like he _belonged _to her, obviously he didn’t, but, maybe a little bit like that, like he was brought here to be her companion, and she was amenable to the idea. She was probably just losing her mind after the years of loneliness.

They didn’t actually find anything to talk about. “I should go,” Larry said after a quiet but not entirely unpleasant hour, sliding his chair back, “I have to re-bandage, I don’t think I did them well enough.” He slunk from the room, and Rita watched him go; how terribly sad, his new reality. Not too long ago, he was completely normal, living his normal life – like Rita had been, much longer ago. The proximity to his normal life made it seem so much sadder. One flip backward of the calendar page, and Larry was a normal person, living a normal life. What if he still had living family? A wife? Wouldn’t a wife still want to see her husband, despite the radiation? For better and for worse, it was supposed to be, but maybe this was beyond _worse. _

Rita stayed at the table for a while, sipping tea and looking out the window. She wondered what it felt like, to know you had people out there somewhere, without you.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “One of the strange things about living in the world is that it is only now and then one is quite sure one is going to live forever and ever and ever.  
“However many years she lived, Mary always felt that 'she should never forget that first morning when her garden began to grow'.”

At two-twenty the next day, Rita set the small table for one, placing a freshly-baked chocolate torte alongside her best bunch of silk flowers and prettiest crystal vase. Good presentation always lifted her spirits; it was why she took such care with her outfits every day. She was pretty proud of the shine she’d achieved on the chocolate, as well as the way she’d arranged the clip in her hair. The cake yesterday had turned out well; she’d left a piece for Larry at the table in the hallway with dinner, and this morning all the plates had been empty, so that had to mean she wasn’t the only person who found her baking decent. He still didn’t come down for meals, which was bordering on rude, but maybe he needed more time to acclimate. He didn’t yet realize, maybe, that the world out here wasn’t the same, but the appearance of normalness was its own comfort. She didn’t think there was much normalness for him in his room.

She was entirely surprised to see him in the doorway, at two-thirty on the dot. He lingered for a moment, like he wanted to ask if he was invited, but then silently joined her at the table.

“Goodness,” she said, “I’ve forgotten your cup.”

“Oh. How? I’m the only guest,” Larry said, and Rita rolled her eyes before rising to take one from the sideboard. He was unpleasant in an odd way, she thought, like it wasn’t in his nature. He was snarky a moment too late, like it wasn’t his first impulse, and was just his poor mood winning out. Like he was too tired and sad to be pleasant; Rita knew the feeling.

“Are these from the garden?” Larry asked after a long silence, nodding to the vase on the table. The flowers were beautiful; Rita had tried her hand at gardening once, but hadn’t much cared for it, and while she liked the liveliness flowers brought to the manor, didn’t have any desire to go around changing water in vases and remembering to pluck dead leaves. She’d never been much of a caretaker, and the reminder stung a little.

“Oh, yes,” Rita nodded towards the plain grass outside the window, “I have a secret garden out there, _filled_ with flowers.” She could be snarky, too, just like Larry.

She immediately felt bad about her sarcasm, though, when Larry nodded along, murmured a dreamy “sounds nice,” that she almost couldn’t hear. There _wasn’t _a garden, of course, one good look outside would have told him that. The backyard was nothing but grass in all directions. Larry’s bedroom overlooked the front of the house, though. For all he knew, there really was a garden tucked just out of sight of their sunroom window. 

“Do you garden?” Rita asked instead, and Larry shrugged, gaze fixed on his teacup. “What _do _you do?”

“I was a pilot. I flew planes.”

“I know that, I mean for fun. Your hobbies.” Was he being difficult on purpose? He wasn’t being forthcoming, that was certain.

“I was pretty busy with work.” He stared outside; was he looking for the garden? Rita was suddenly filled with guilt. After a moment of gazing out, Larry flinched, and turned away from the windows. “I can’t imagine going outside again,” he murmured. “How can you do it?”

“I don’t,” Rita pointed out, and he laughed sharply.

“I don’t mean in public, just… out. At all.” He crossed his arms over his chest, shook his head. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do now, just… what’s the point?”

“Of… still being _alive_?” Rita asked, but it was the wrong question, too upfront, because he pushed his chair back and hurried out of the room. Maybe her tone had been off. She’d meant it, though; she’d wondered that herself before, what the _point _was when she was apparently living on, and on, and on, and all in solitude. Mild curiosity, she supposed; there was always something she was wondering about tomorrow.

Larry didn’t seem to have anything. The only time he’d shown even a fragment of interest was when she’d talked about her garden. The one she didn’t have. And besides, it wasn’t like it was Rita’s responsibility to do anything about this; he was her roommate, and even that was a stretch. They just both inhabited the same ridiculous manor at the same time, and would continue to do so until – well. Rita didn’t seem to be leaving anytime soon, and she couldn’t see Larry leaving either, when he barely even left his room. Still, that didn’t make Larry her problem.

Suddenly, Rita couldn’t feel anything but guilt. It was so small and silly, she _knew _that, but she couldn’t get it out of her head. The only time she’d gotten even the tiniest peek at Larry, whoever he really was, had to do with the garden she didn’t actually have. She’d heard it in his voice, that dreamy, floating _sounds nice, _like he was a hundred miles away and wherever he was, it was beautiful there. Like if Rita could have taken him by the hand and led him to her garden outside, he would have felt something heal inside him, just a little. Just enough, maybe.

But there _was no garden, _and anyways, was it really up to Rita to pull Larry from the darkness he’d fallen into?

The phone book was gathering dust in the study, and Rita had to brush it off before she could stand to open the cover. Finding the numbers she needed was easy enough; even making the calls wasn’t too difficult. The truly difficult part came when she heard a truck coming down the long drive several hours later, and had to pull herself together enough to walk out to meet them.

_For Larry, _she kept telling herself, as she explained what she wanted and pointed at the empty grass, and it was somehow enough to keep her from falling apart. Somehow, this man she barely knew and the desire to help him was enough to keep her from melting away.

The fence went up quickly. Rita had no idea how to build a fence, and would have thought it to be a much more complicated process, but just a couple days later, there it was. It wasn’t brick, like in the story, but it was a lovely tall fence, with lattice at the top, and a door that opened with a key. The key felt important.

After the workmen had left, Rita stepped into the garden alone, and locked the gate behind her. It was still just empty grass, with the fence enclosing one of the large pre-existing trees near the corner. There was nothing there yet, but maybe there was – a quietness, a contained peace. The fence stopped the wind that swept uninhibited across the grass from reaching her, and the leaves on the tree swayed gently. It was nicer than being on the patio, because of the walls, and the locked door.

Rita wasn’t much of a gardener, so she gave herself a head start, and ordered potted plants as well as seeds. Getting them into the ground was another thing; Rita wasn’t known for her eagerness to get dirt under her nails, but she dutifully spread out a towel to kneel on, wielded a tiny spade, and set to work. One of the nursery people had told her she needed flowerbeds, not just to plop the plants into the grass, and although it sounded like an upsell, she had nodded at his offer to bring soil and plot out some flowerbeds. It had doubled the cost, but Rita didn’t much care. Niles left her home all alone for months on end; it was her prerogative to do some home renovations. This was what she looked at every day, after all.

The potted plants went in easily enough. Rita sorted them by type, and by color. She was irritated the seeds came in muti-color mixes so she couldn’t do the same, but she lined them up in their little rows besides their blooming counterparts, and just… waited.

Every few days, she mentioned it to Larry. “The garden is doing well,” she’d say, pouring him more tea, and he’d nod silently.

“The garden, huh?” he’d say, every time. Rita didn’t quite understand where his spark of interest had disappeared off to, but it would come back. Maybe it was because he was so afraid of going outside, of feeling so _seen. _She understood. Ceilings were so much safer than endless sky, and walls had a way of making the world feel handleable in a way that open space did not.

Weeks went by, maybe months. One overcast Wednesday, Rita stood in her garden, watering can in hand, and felt entirely different.

Rita was quite possibly going to live forever, but the strange thing about it was that only now and then was she quite sure about it. She was going to live forever and ever, and no matter how many years she lived, she felt that she would never forget that first morning, when her garden began to grow.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “If you look the right way, you can see that the whole world is a garden.”

When the peonies bloomed, Rita tried valiantly to convince Larry to come outside, and he shook his head no, each of the three times she asked.

When the dahlias bloomed, Rita insisted. “Larry,” she said sternly, during their daily tea, “you _must _come see the garden. I know you like gardening!” She thought he did, anyway. That first mention, months and months ago, had been real. Larry gave a long sigh, and looked at her for a long, weary time.

“I know, Rita.”

“Know what?”

“I know there’s no garden,” Larry said, his voice hard, but not like he was angry. Like he was upset at having to say it, like he didn’t enjoy the reality of it. “I went outside when I first got here, okay? I thought it might help, but it didn’t. I was outside, I saw everything out there, and there’s nothing. There’s nothing anywhere. I know you’re probably trying to make me feel better, but – then what? So what if I go outside? It won’t fix everything, you can’t lure me out there with this fake garden-”

_“Larry,” _Rita interrupted, lifted her chin defiantly. “I admit that there wasn’t a garden there before. I was being sarcastic, and you misinterpreted it. I should have corrected you then, but, well. You shouldn’t have jumped to conclusions.” She tossed her hair, fixed him with an even look. He was so obstinate, she wanted to drag him outside and – well, he was right, it wouldn’t fix everything, but it at least felt important that he knew she wasn’t _lying _to him. “It sounded like something you may like, so I went out and made one.”

“What?” Larry appeared completely bewildered, taken entirely off track by this. “You _made _one? One what?”

“A garden.” Rita dabbed at her lips with the corner of a cloth napkin, then stood. “Come on, then. I won’t stand for this bickering any longer. We’re going outside.”

Larry trailed along after her silently, didn’t put up a fight as she led him outside into the sunshine. She couldn’t see his eyes, but she assumed he looked rather shocked when he saw that, just out of sight of the sunroom window, there stood her secret garden.

“Come along,” Rita instructed, producing the key from her skirt pocket and unlocking the gate. Larry followed. When Rita stepped inside and locked the gate behind them, she knew the locking gate had been instrumental; Larry’s shoulders relaxed at the sound, and he looked around in silence.

It was really coming along, and Rita didn’t want to boast, but she’d done quite an excellent job. She watered and read books about pruning and then cautiously pruned; she put in a bench and some flat stones as pathways in between flowerbeds.

Larry stood and looked around, and Rita held her breath. It felt like she was offering him a home, one more meaningful than the manor itself, like this was her offering of where he could lay his heart, planted amongst the flowers.

“John was the one who gardened,” Larry said, the words so soft and gentle, Rita knew she was finally hearing his real voice. Argumentative, obstinate Larry had melted away, and here he truly was: quiet, gentle, so very soft. He’d lived in a world where it hadn’t fit in, and maybe he was finally seeing that here, he did. “I liked being there with him.” He stood there, shoulders slumped, unmoving. Rita moved to the bench, seated herself on it and arranged her skirt so it wouldn’t snag on the wood.

“Why don’t you tell me about him?” she suggested, and Larry sat beside her. He didn’t say much, as the floral-scented breeze drifted around them, making leaves sway in the trees.

“I loved him,” Larry said softly. “I couldn’t really have him, but I loved him.”

For a long time, this was the only place where Rita could hear Larry, the only time his softest, realest voice was audible: when it was just them, surrounded by flowers, walls on all four sides to keep them safe. For five years, this was the only place, when Larry would unfurl and sound both incredibly sad and less lonely.

Several years later, Jane came to them like an outside force acting on their hidden world, and Rita did wonder, momentarily, if this would send Larry into another hiding. Jane didn’t stay permanently, but brought with her the outside world each time she came, a reminder that it went on without them.

“She just… goes back out into it,” Larry said one afternoon, after Jane had swept her way back out again, a version of herself they hadn’t yet seen. “Everyone’s still out there.”

“Your people, maybe,” Rita murmured, frowning at her knitting. It didn’t bother her quite so much as it used to; these days, her interactions with the rest of the world were surprisingly frequent. Her garden needed things to sustain it, and Rita went bravely, sometimes even in person, to obtain them. It needed her.

“That’s the worst part,” Larry mumbled, and he came to sit beside her on the couch, sank down in silence. “I don’t know if it’s more selfish to find them or to stay away.” Rita lifted her head, looked over at him; Larry, worrying his fingers in his lap, slumped beside her, with the voice she only heard surrounded by flowers. It wasn’t the garden, maybe, that made him feel safe.

“It’s hard to know,” Rita said, carefully, “only you can choose, but you’re also the only one who has to carry the regret afterwards.”

Larry nodded, sighed, sank into a silence he only broke an hour later, to murmur, “I’m glad you’re here, too.”

And there they were, entirely outside the secret garden, and Rita thought that maybe, the whole world was a garden, or maybe, to Larry, Rita was the garden.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Minor spoilers! For an episode I haven't actually watched but accidentally saw gifs of, near the end of season 1? I'm trying not to see too much so I don't spoil it for myself anymore. Awkward.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Two things cannot be in one place. “Where, you tend a rose, my lad, a thistle cannot grow.”

Somehow, Rita found that their world could change quite a lot without changing much at all. That’s what it was, _theirs, _the burden of a world trapped within the manor now shared between them, everything small but somehow so long-lasting it became big, withstanding. Cliff’s arrival and lack of departure wasn’t the earthquake Rita would have thought it would be. Sometimes, although the manor was finite and not nearly as big as she pictured Misselthwaite Manor to be, it felt like there was enough space that an entire new life could find its own place there, just falling into one of the empty rooms and settling in. And just like that, a change faded into the normalcy, and now there were four of them, but there was still also just the two of them.

“Hey, so, I have a question,” Cliff said one evening, during dinner; it felt a little odd to now have two dinner guests who didn’t eat when she did, but Rita had long since stopped noticing. “Does anyone else see the locked-up garden outside, or is it just me? It’s real, right?”

“Why on earth would you think it isn’t real?” Rita looked between Cliff and Larry, who snorted out a laugh but didn’t help.

“Uh, no one talks about it? It’s just this weird little walled-in garden with a locked door in the middle of the grass.” Cliff gestured towards the direction of the backyard, although there weren’t any windows overlooking it in the dining room. “Just this big field, and a room right in the middle of it? What’s _in _there?”

“My garden.”

“Your garden? With, like… dirt?” Though he didn’t have facial expressions, Cliff’s voice more than conveyed his dubiousness. “You don’t like dirt.”

“I like _gardens. _They just happen to occur in dirt.”

“Why is it locked?” Cliff asked, and, well, it was an oddly complicated question. It was locked because the secret garden in the book had been locked away. It was locked because when Rita turned the key, Larry’s voice got softer. It was locked because that made it secret, and Rita needed a secret that was wonderful, not ruinous. Rita tossed her hair, lifted a hand in a questioning gesture.

“Thieves,” she answered airily. Larry choke-laughed again. “This area is overrun with thieves.”

“Did you plant diamonds in the flowerbeds or something?” Cliff sounded like he very much wanted to roll his eyes. “What would these thieves even steal?”

“It’s similar to cattle rustling,” Larry contributed, and Cliff laboriously looked between the two of them, turning from one side of the table to the other.

“_Cattle rustling. _What would you know about that, exactly?”

“I come from a simpler time.”

“You went to _space, _bandage boy! Did you see a lot of cattle rustling on the moon? And anyways, stealing flowers isn’t a lot like stealing cattle, unless you’re trying to tell me you keep cows or chickens or something in there!” Cliff paused. “_Do _you have chickens in there?”

“Chickens?” Rita recoiled. “Goodness, Cliff, do you think I’d touch live poultry?”

“Live poultry,” Cliff slumped in his chair, the seat creaking warily. “_Neither _of you grew up on a farm, O wise cattle rustling experts.”

Cliff wasn’t an earth-shattering change. As huge as it seemed, an entire new person existing in their world, he slid into place effortlessly. Nothing that came from the new direction they were headed in could reach their foundations; only things that rose up from the past, Rita realized, had the power to do that, to come from beneath and split the floor apart beneath them.

John came out of the past.

On the surface, it didn’t seem like anything had broken. They discovered that John was alive, and when Larry saw him – Larry was alive, apologetic but grateful, and he held John’s hands and told him everything, and light emanated from them when they looked at each other. When Larry looked at Rita, though, when he looked at Rita and said “this is him,” Larry looked so entirely lost, so shaken, and Rita knew he’d never leave John with the impression that this was going to ruin him for the seemingly infinite rest of his life.

John was alive; Larry was happy, he was clearly happy, in a way that Rita had never seen for herself but somehow didn’t feel unfamiliar, because it fit in so well with the memories Larry had told her about. She could see him the way he’d been, dancing with John in a faraway bar, kissing him hidden around corners, touching John’s face the way he’d done today, like he was the most precious thing Larry had ever held. Larry was overflowing with joy at seeing John alive, at having the chance to go forward for however long was left, at leaving him with the new knowledge that he’d see John again.

When they got home, Rita went right to the garden and waited. She left the key in the door, and moved about quietly, plucking dead leaves and twigs until she heard the gate open, Larry’s footsteps across the grass. Larry sank onto the bench, watched her in silence for what had to be nearly twenty minutes.

“He understood,” Larry finally said, and Rita joined him on the bench, smoothing her skirt across her knees and looking at Larry only from the side. “He would have understood this whole time.” When Larry’s head sank into his hands, Rita put her arms around him, leaned him in against her, so close his hitching breaths shuddered through her.

“I know,” she murmured.

“He’s _alive, _I can see him again, but I – I should have gone sooner. I should have never left. I _wasted – _how can I be so fucking sad when he’s _here? _I got him back, I should – I should be –”

“You can be happy and sad at the same time,” Rita said, and Larry sobbed, just once, before he sat up and shook his head. 

“How _dare _I, though? He’s _here, _and I’m just – I’m _sad? _How can I be sad that I was so cowardly, that I let myself lose decades with him, when it doesn’t even matter anymore? He’s _here _now.”

“But you still lost something,” Rita said softly, “you can mourn what you lost, even if the losing has stopped now. It doesn’t mean you don’t appreciate that he’s here now. You’ve still lost something, and knowing you could have had it – that’s a new loss that you’re mourning. You can feel both.”

“We can’t even have happiness without heartbreak,” Larry muttered, and Rita reached to set a hand on his knee, squeezed gently.

“And even when we’ve been sad,” she said, “we’ve found something good within it.” Larry had John back, though finding him had meant losing him anew, repainting their lost years together; Rita had lost her whole life, but in this new one, she’d found Larry, and she’d never felt so connected with someone before, her new life affording her an openness she hadn’t previously found. There had been loss, but this new life had been born of it, too.

That was something the story had gotten quite wrong, Rita thought. _Two things cannot be in one place, _the story said, _where you tend a rose, a thistle cannot grow, _but Rita didn’t find that to be true. In her secret garden, tucked behind the locked gate, thistles found their way in, sprouted where they wished with a stubbornness she couldn’t fight. They didn’t overtake her flowerbeds, though, not as long as Rita was there to tend to things.

Though there were thistles in her garden, Rita found herself able to bloom roses.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading this ridiculous Secret Garden- AU!! You can find me on tumblr at icehot13 for more fic in an ever-growing number of fandoms because I can't stop myself. Maybe more fic during the shelter-in, especially since I'm now working 3 overnights a week doing electrical work at the hospital so i spend the rest of the week awake from midnight to EIGHT AM with nothing to do all alone! the perfect time for fic! 
> 
> Thank you so much for reading!!


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